Sunday, September 30, 2012

Somewhere in the house I still have a little lapel button bearing the words BRAVO SOLTI. It's a treasured souvenir from the great conductor's 80th birthday party, hosted by Decca at a Knightsbridge hotel in 1992, at which the company that had hosted his whole recording career presented him with the gift of a mountain bike. It was the only time I ever met him, and then only for the briefest of handshakes. More enduring is the memory of his music-making, notably the greatest Mahler 5 I've ever heard.

A couple of months ago I went up to St John's Wood to see Lady Solti and interviewed her in her husband's studio, surrounded by Grammys, Hungarian souvenirs and an array of memorabilia from his many decades at the top of the musical tree.

Here's the first part of the results: a major article in this week's JC, offering a taste of the celebratory events that are currently swinging into action and also, I hope, giving an intimate portrait of Sir Georg, his motivation and the way his philosophy of life was underpinned by his sense of his Hungarian Jewish identity. Read the whole thing here.

Solti was principal conductor of my OH's orchestra for several years and was received by its players with widely varying degrees of devotion, of lack of it. OH, being from a whole family of outsize central European personalities, adored him - Solti reminded him of his grandmother. Others didn't know how to cope with him. Some players nicknamed him "the screaming skull". And years later, one cellist persistently threatened to run over our cat (who, as you know, is named in Sir Georg's honour).

In the article Charles Kaye, Solti's right-hand man for around 20 years, talks about how Solti would wake up every morning wanting to be better at what he did and how he could inspire an entire orchestra to follow suit. OH encountered this in one form or another many times. During one rehearsal, he says, Solti turned on the first violins and shook the nearest music stand at them. "You must play this better!" he shouted, in that famous Hungarian accent. "I pay you money if you play it better!" OH put up his hand and said: "How much?" Solti was joking, of course - but it turned out that he liked being joked at in return.

Much looking forward to hearing the OAE's first "Queens, Heroines and Ladykillers" concert this evening: it stars the incomparable Anna Caterina Antonacci (right) singing Gluck, Cherubini and Berlioz, with Sir Roger Norrington conducting (Royal Festival Hall, kick-off at 7pm). It got me wondering why, when Christoph Willibald von Gluck's music had such a long-range influence, we rarely hearmuch of it today. So I did some swotting and dropped Sir Roger a line...

Gluck’s surname means ‘Joy’ – and so does his music. Or some of it.
Hear Kathleen Ferrier’s recording of the aria ‘Che faro senza Euridice’ (‘What
is life to me without thee’) from Orfeo
ed Euridice and the directness and depth of the music is unmistakeable:
it’s pure aural gold.

Gluck
was a pivotal figure in opera’s development, switching its emphasis away from
the virtuosity of its singers to the core of the drama they were supposed to
express. His works prepared the ground not only for the operas of Mozart, but
also – many decades later – Berlioz and Wagner, who revered him. His biography
was written by Alfred Einstein. Strange, then, that it is rare to hear much of
his work today, beyond a few “greatest hits”.

Without
Gluck (who was born in the Upper Palatinate in 1714 and died in Vienna in 1787)
the history of opera would have been unrecognisable. Berlioz summed him up,
writing: “He innovated in almost every field... he was gifted with an
extraordinary feeling for expression and a rare understanding of the human
heart, and his sole aim was to give passions a true, profound and powerful
language.”

Gluck
developed an antipathy to traditional baroque Italian opera seria – perhaps because he was not especially good at writing
them. He enjoyed some early successes in the genre, but an attempt to establish
himself in London came to a rapid and ignominious end, drawing harsh words from
Handel, who famously declared that Gluck “knows no more counterpoint than my
cook”.

Counterpoint
was not what interested Gluck. Literature inspired him, poetry, drama and
character; when an opera libretto was underpowered, so, arguably, were his
results. But at his finest, Gluck reached the cutting edge of Enlightenment
composition well ahead of anybody else.

Einstein
made an intriguing accusation, however, suggesting that just after the success
of Orfeo ed Euridice in 1762, Gluck
reverted to the old opera seria style
he disliked for an opera entitled Ezio
– possibly for the sake of a good fee. Perhaps he did. But perhaps it didn’t
matter: according to Sir Roger Norrington, Gluck’s significance is deeper than
just his attempts at musical revolution.

“Gluck’s
influence arose from his melodic genius as much as from his reforming zeal,” he
comments. “The touching honesty of his arias gives them tremendous power. I
admire the way Gluck risks great simplicity in his musical methods, at a time
when elaboration and show were taken to such lengths – Gluck is basically a
very serious composer, but he touches the heart with the strength of his
feeling.”

Gluck reached
the zenith of fame via a tremendous controversy, stirred up as only Parisian
high society knew how. He was the favourite composer of Marie Antoinette, who
had once been his pupil in Vienna. With her help, he secured some operatic
commissions in Paris in the 1770s and moved to live there. Madame du Barry,
mistress of King Louis XV and no friend to his grandson’s queen-to-be, set up a
direct opponent, championing a leading Italian composer of opera seria, Niccolo
Piccini, and having him summoned to the French capital. Amid these musical
dangerous liaisons, the city divided into passionate Gluckists and
Piccini-ists, their fans even fighting duels to establish the superiority of
their favourite.

Ultimately
the composers fought a musical duel, both writing operas on the same subject, Iphigénie en Tauride. The result?
Gluck’s quality shone through for all to hear.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Viktor Ullmann's opera The Emperor of Atlantis, written in 1943 in Terezin, is a centrepiece of English Touring Opera's new season and opens at the ROH Linbury Studio on Friday. Here's a slightly longer version of the piece I've written about it for today's Independent. Before the first performance some early evening events will include a short interview that I will give with Anita Lasker Wallfisch, cellist and survivor of Auschwitz, where Ullmann, his librettist and most others involved with the creation of this opera met their deaths.

Also, do see ETO's video about the opera:

In 1944
the Nazis released a propaganda film entitled The Führer Gives the Jews a City. Terezin, in north-west Bohemia, was
the place in question: it had been turned into, supposedly, a show-camp, a
smokescreen to blind the world to what was really going on in the other
concentration camps. The film – an elaborate hoax – showed artistic individuals
within Terezin engaging in creative activities, giving concerts and even putting
on their own operas. It did not disclose the grimmer reality that more than
50,000 people were crammed into living quarters designed for 7000, where
thousands were dying from starvation and disease.

Much of
Prague’s Jewish population was deported to Terezin, including a number of
brilliant musicians and intellectuals; and, perhaps in a terrible irony, they were
indeed able to pursue their creativity with what facilities were available. But
after their deaths – many of them in the gas chambers of Auschwitz – the
musical achievements of Terezin’s inmates, including the composers Viktor
Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas and Hans Krasa, lay forgotten for decades,
until in the 1970s efforts began to be made to rediscover them.

This
autumn English Touring Opera is taking up the cause of one of the most
substantial works forged in these extraordinary circumstances: Ullmann’s
hour-long opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis
(The Emperor of Atlantis). In a new production by ETO’s artistic director and
chief executive James Conway, and paired unusually with a staged Bach cantata, Christ lag in Todesbanden, it will be
seen at the Royal Opera House for the first time (in the Linbury Studio), and
will then enjoy its first-ever UK nationwide tour.

Over the
past 15-20 years the composers of Terezin have started to be widely recognised,
though usually their works appear in programmes themed around Terezin itself. Now
Ullmann’s opera will be required to stand as a mainstream work in its own
right.

The libretto
is by a gifted young poet Peter Kien, who was also imprisoned in Terezin. It is
a black comedy poking fun at a dictator who faces a predicament when Death goes
on strike (the original title was Death
Abdicates). No prizes for guessing which dictator it satirised. That makes
it all the more remarkable that the work reached its dress rehearsal in 1943
before the authorities spotted the nature of its content. Once they did, the
performance was cancelled, the opera was banned and those involved were put on
the next transport to Auschwitz. Ullmann and Kien met their deaths there in
1944.

Before
Ullmann was forced into his last train journey, he gave the opera’s manuscript
to a friend, a former philosophy professor, for safekeeping. Its survival seems
miraculous. Yet it was only in 1975 that it was performed for the first time,
in Amsterdam. The first British production was at Morley College in 1981.

Ullmann
more than deserves wider recognition. Born in 1898 in Teschen, Silesia, he was
from a family of Jewish background that had converted to Catholicism; both he
and his father served in World War I, and the young composer’s experiences in
the conflict between Austria and Italy fed into The Emperor of Atlantis.

He became
a composition student of Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna and later of Alexander von
Zemlinsky in Prague; his repute as a conductor soon grew as well, though he was
dismissed from his post at a theatre in Aussig an der Elbe for selecting
repertoire that was too adventurous. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, he
established himself in Prague as writer, critic, teacher and lecturer until he
was deported to Terezin in 1942. His output includes many excellent art songs
and chamber music, as well as an earlier opera, Fall of the Antichrist.

James
Conway of ETO first directed The Emperor
of Atlantis some years ago in Ireland; he felt it produced a powerful
impact. “Ullmann was a fantastic composer,” he declares, “and I think Peter
Kien was a beautiful and poetic writer. The opportunities to perform operas
that have a truly poetic script are few – usually in opera, the words have to
serve music and narrative. Here narrative is less important, while a visionary
quality is more significant, involving political, social and spiritual
discussion about life and death. It’s a brilliant depiction – perhaps of
aspects of Terezin, but, even more, of a state of being.”

The
music is a fragmented and eclectic mix of cutting-edge contemporary style, jazz
influence and pastiche: “It literally goes from Schoenberg to vaudeville in the
space of two bars,” says the conductor Peter Selwyn, who is at the helm for the
tour. “It has moments of extraordinary lyrical beauty. And suddenly the drums
come in and you’re whisked away into a showpiece number.”

The Bach
Cantata, Christ lag in Todesbanden,
has been specially orchestrated for almost the same forces that the Ullmann
employs – including the saxophone, but minus the banjo – to unify the two
soundworlds. “The Ullmann finishes with a chorale, so the evening will end with
a mirror of the way it began,” Selwyn points out. “The Bach cantata concerns
the triumph of the spirit and of humanity in the face of death and despair. And
the triumph of life over death is the message of the chorale at the end of the
Ullmann. That’s the message that we would like the Ullmann to have, bearing in
mind the circumstances of its creation.”

“I want
the evening to have a consonance about it,” says Conway. “There’s something
about dying that declares the richness and integrity of life, and that declares
we do not go nameless to death. That effort to take away names and histories we
will resist. This opera is a beautiful testimony to the artistic lives of
people at Terezin. Even though I insist that the piece has a life independent
of the Terezin context, one can’t ignore it. And at the end of the piece I wish
there could be applause for Ullmann, Kien and the performers who were taken and
murdered before there could be a premiere.”

The Emperor of Atlantis, English
Touring Opera, Royal Opera House Linbury Studio, from 5 October 2012, then on
national tour until 17 November. Full tour details at http://englishtouringopera.org.uk/tour-dates/autumn-2012

Friday, September 28, 2012

First of all, it was Benjamin's big day [left]. Since the BBC has moved many of its TV operations, including the Breakfast news programme, to Salford - about 200 miles away from most of the action, eg. the government, a daft decision if ever there was one - he was up north at crack of dawn to appear there. Then whisked all the way back to London just in time to be catapulted onto live Radio 4, for which The World at One was able to cover the awards since the news of them was out early. Next, into the ballroom to accept two prizes, make a couple of speeches and play two party pieces [below], and receive the goodwill of the music industry, which was his by by bucketload.

The indefatigable James Jolly more than lived up to his name as he presented the prizes, aided and abetted by Eric Whitacre and "Sopranielle" de Niese, as someone managed to dub her. Danni treated us to a performance of Lehar's 'Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß', over which our host quipped "I bet they do"... Live music too from the mesmerising violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya, playing the Bartok Romanian Dances in authentic Romanian Gypsy style; and Granados from Leif Ove Andsnes, who was in town to play at the RFH and came in to collect the chamber music prize, awarded to him and Christian and Tanya Tetzlaff for their glorious recording of Schumann trios. [Above, he collects his award from Danni.]

There were touching moments aplenty. Think of the filmed interview with Murray Perahia, who scooped the new Piano Prize, proving yet again why genuine musicianship cannot be trumped by anything, ever; or the turbo-charged voice of Joseph Calleja, scooping Artist of the Year. Most moving of all, though, Vaclav Talich's granddaughter came in to accept the historical recording award on his behalf: his Smetana Ma Vlast, given in concert in 1939 two months after the Wehrmacht marched into Prague and featuring a moment in which the audience spontaneously broke into singing the national anthem. There's no other moment like it on disc, said Rob Cowan.

Priceless, too, was the announcement of Record of the Year, which went to the Baroque Vocal category for Schütz's Musikalische Exequien - from the Belgian choir Vox Luminis and its director Lionel Meunier. A towering figure (literally) with a blend of charm and modesty that captured everyone's hearts as he stood, overwhelmed, by the microphone [left], Lionel explained that the whole recording was organised in his kitchen and he could hardly believe he was going to go back to his choir the next day and say "We f***ing got Record of the Year!" Plenty of time for chat, gossip and networking in between, natch: a chance to clink glasses with some and say "Better times ahead?" and others to say "Bravi", and others still to reflect on the growing parallels between two of our greatest tenors now, Calleja and Kaufmann (who pre-recorded a thank-you speech for the Fidelio recording with Abbado and Nina Stemme that took the opera prize) and, respectively, force-of-nature Pavarotti and deep-thinking, dark-toned Domingo. Among my most interesting encounters was a discussion with a critic who'd come in from the pop culture world to see what it was all about. He was furious. Why? Because, he says, there's all this incredible music, yet it's somehow been sectioned off and the world at large never gets to hear it! The decision-makers in the British media don't include it as part of culture in general, and they should. It's been ghettoised. And not through any fault of its own - millions of people love it when they have the chance. Why keep it out of the mainstream with some cack-handed inverted snobbery that says the general public isn't capable of appreciating it?One more Gramophone needle: here's the line-up of winners for the final group photo.

That's right, they're all blokes.

Violinist Isabelle Faust won the concerto category, to be fair-ish; Tanya Tetzlaff features in the chamber music, and Nina Stemme in Fidelio, but the latter scarcely got a mention while everyone was drooling over Jonas's speech and adulating Claudio Abbado who won the Lifetime Achievement award. The two women who collected awards did so on others' behalf: Talich's granddaughter and Perahia's wife.

Of course, there's a strong feeling that these awards are for musical achievement alone and gender balance shouldn't matter. In an ideal world, yes, fine. But this isn't one. Given the number of world-class female musicians on the circuit at present, how is it possible that only one-and-two-bits were among the winners of so many major awards?

I still have the feeling that to be fully recognised as a woman musician, you must work five times as hard as the men and look perfect as well. There's an unfortunate double-bind in the music industry: those charged with selling the artists via image doll up the women as sex symbols, only for a fair number of critics to succumb at once, consciously or otherwise, to the prejudice that "they're being sold on their looks, so they can't be any good". This isn't the way it ought to be.

I begrudge none of these marvellous male musicians their prizes: each and every one was fully deserved. Yet is it now time to introduce an alternative industry award, like the erstwhile-Orange Prize for Fiction, to boost the wider recognition of female classical musicians on the strength of their artistry, not their looks? Sad to say, but the answer is yes.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Off to the RealLifePoshPlace (as opposed to the JDCMB Cyberposhplace) for a day of celebration and suspense as the Gramophone Awards are announced...oh wait... No suspense, except for Record of the Year. A press release has just plopped into the in-box telling us all the others. Which you'd think kind of defeats the purpose of having the entire UK music business sit in the Dorchester all day...

But
there's some really wonderful news: Benjamin Grosvenor has won both
Young Artist of the Year and Instrumental, in the latter category
pipping to the post no lesser personages than Stephen Hough and Paul
Lewis. That definitely requires something bubbly.

Right now I'm busy putting on a smart dress and a bit o' slap, so I'm going to post the press release. Stand by for the full inside report on the goings-on after the event and follow on Twitter at #GramoAwards. I may tweet now and then if I have any reception on the fruityphone.

The Gramophone Awards–the
world’s most influential classical music prizes – are announced today
at London’s Dorchester Hotel in a ceremony co-hosted by two of classical
music’s hottest properties: composer and conductor – and professional
model – Eric Whitacre, and Danielle de Niese, described by The New York Times as “opera’s coolest soprano”.

James Jolly, Editor-in-Chief of Gramophone said:

“With
more than 750 new recordings of phenomenal range and quality under
consideration for the 2012 Gramophone Awards, coming up with the
shortlists and winners has been challenging, but extremely enjoyable.
This is an extremely exciting and vibrant time for classical music and
the winners announced today represent the best of the best, where the
best is a very rich feast indeed.”

The Gramophone Awards 2012, now in their 35th year, are presented in association with Steinway & Sons and EFG International.

The most coveted prize, ‘Recording of the Year’, will be revealed during today’s ceremony and announced this afternoon.

Crowning
a magnificent year that saw him become both the youngest soloist to
open the BBC Proms and the youngest pianist ever to be signed by Decca, Benjamin Grosvenor now becomes Gramophone’s youngest double-Award winner. He is named Young Artist of the Yearand wins the Best Instrumental category for his debut disc of music by Ravel, Chopin and Liszt on Decca. The 20-year-old from Southend-on-Sea has been highly praised for his poetic expression
and virtuosity, and this double accolade from Gramophone is another
noteworthy badge of honour in his rise to international acclaim.

Joseph Calleja is named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year
in the only Award decided by public vote. It rounds off an incredible
year for the Maltese tenor, described by Gramophone as “a tenor of
uncommon distinction, whose elegance and sense of style are second to
none on the operatic stage today.” From performing at the Last Night of
the Proms to reaching No. 1 in the Danish pop charts Calleja is now
established as a regular at all the leading opera houses in the world,
including the Royal Opera House and New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
Joseph reaches out to a wide public who respond as much to his open and
charming personality as his voice. His latest album ‘Be My Love,’ a
tribute to Mario Lanza, became an instant best-seller.

“His vision has left an imprint on every orchestra in Europe” says fellow conductor Daniel Harding, of this year’s Lifetime Achievement winner, Claudio Abbado.
Abbado conducts the best orchestras, yet devotes much of his time to
nurturing young talent, as founder and music director of the Youth
Orchestra of the European Union and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra,
as well as artistic director of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and
founder and principal conductor of both the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
and Italy’s Orchestra Mozart. He has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon
since 1967, amassing a discography that includes the entire symphonic
works of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Ravel and
more than 20 complete opera recordings.

A new prize for 2012, The Piano Award, goes to one of today’s most respected musicians, Murray Perahia.
Gramophone has long celebrated Perahia’s exceptional sensibility,
lyricism and naturalness, but in the year that Perahia celebrates 40
years of recording for Sony Classical and its forerunner CBS
Masterworks, Gramophone pays special tribute to this exceptional
pianist. In addition to the Award, Gramophone has produced a digital
magazine that gathers together every Perahia review it hasever published.

Superbly
produced, gorgeously packaged recordings of artistic vision and
integrity from musicians of the highest calibre, symbolises naïve - Gramophone’s 2012 Label of the Year.
Naïve’s artist roster is rich and impressive, from Jordi Savall,
Anne-Sofie von Otter and Marc Minkowski with his Musiciens du Louvre, to
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Bertrand Chamayou and Francesco Piemontesi. The
label looks set to leave a legacy with its ground-breaking Vivaldi
Edition, one of the most ambitious recording projects ever undertaken.
Now in its twelfth year, the unprecedented Vivaldi Edition captures on
record the entire collection of autograph manuscripts by the composer
preserved in Turin’s Biblioteca Nazionale, making up some 450 works and
unearthing never-before-heard works along the way.

A special Historic Reissue Award honours an extraordinary 1939 live recording of Smetana’s Má vlast by the Czech Philharmonic under Václav Talich.
The extraordinary recording, issued by Supraphon, captures a
spontaneous outburst of the Czech national anthem by the audience,
symbolising the burning presence of Czech patriotism in a
German-occupied Prague.

Winners were also announced across the 15 album categories (see below).

Gramophone has been producing a series of podcasts supporting the Awards at www.gramophone.co.ukand during the month of August, nearly 50,000 were downloaded. Gramophone
has also formed retail partnerships with Amazon, i-Tunes and many of
the UK’s specialist retailers. iTunes is offering a free sampler
featuring Award-winning recordings at www.itunes.com/gramawards.

Gramophone’s Awards issue is published on Friday 28 September with full information about the Awards and winners.

The
Baroque Instrumental category acknowledges the remarkable level of
musicianship that has built on decades of scholarship to create one of
the most dynamic areas of the current music scene. The Freiburg Baroque
Orchestra is one of the most thrilling ensembles around today, and wins a
Gramophone Award for the second year in a row. Gramophone says: “It’s
hard to imagine an eminent Baroque ensemble more temperamentally suited
to the esprit of Bach’s four orchestral essays than the Freiburgers.”

Baroque Vocal

Schütz: Musicalische Exequien. Vox Luminis / Lionel Meunier

[Ricercar / RSK]

Along
with its Instrumental sister category, Baroque Vocal is one of the most
dynamic areas of music-making today and this winner is impeccably
performed, recorded and presented. Lionel Meunier and Vox Luminis’s
release of Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien “embodies everything a
Recording of the Year should be,” according to Gramophone. Schütz’s
Baroque masterpiece, which inspired Brahms for his German Requiem, is performed by a vocal ensemble “over-endowed with impressive individual turns.”

Making
music with friends is one of the most rewarding pursuits anyone –
amateur or professional – can do, and this category allows music lovers
to glimpse musicians – most decidedly professional and at the top of
their game – getting together and performing in intimate surroundings.
Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes – no stranger to the Gramophone
Awards – teams up with his regular musical partners Christian and Tanja
Tetzlaff in Schumann's music for piano to create what Gramophone
describes as “a remarkable achievement.”

Stephen
Layton – nominated twice in this category this year – is one of the few
choirmasters to work both within the Oxbridge choir tradition (as music
director at Trinity College, Cambridge) and outside it (as the director
of Polyphony and a much-sought-after guest by many top-league choirs).
With his Cambridge choir, he here celebrates one of English music's most
appealing composers, Herbert Howells, in a recording described by
Gramophone as “a perfect disc of its kind.”

Isabelle
Faust, a former Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, returns to the
Awards in some very distinguished company, Orchestra Mozart and Claudio
Abbado. Here Beethoven is intriguingly coupled with Berg in concerto
performances described by Gramophone as “models
of artistic and human discipline, meticulously probing Berg’s and
Beethoven’s intentions but conveying also a sense that such peaks of
human achievement are something you assume from within, not take by
force from without.”

Rautavaara’s
magnificent, highly contrasting percussion and cello concertos make for
a sensational release. Performed with “coruscating virtuosity” by
percussionist Colin Currie and with cellist Truls Mørk “caressing out
the subtleties” in the cello concerto, Ondine vividly sets the seal on
this superb Contemporary Award-winner. The soloists are supported by
John Storgårds – going from strength to strength on the podium – and the
excellent Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

DVD Documentary

‘Music Makes A City.’ A film by Owsley Brown III & Jerome Hiler

[Harmonia Mundi]

'Music
makes a City', a film made by Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler, tells
the scarcely believable, but inspiring, story of the Louisville
Orchestra from Kentucky and its belief that new music was the answer to
creating wealth and power for the city following the Great Depression
and crippling floods there in 1937. The list of composers who were
commissioned by the Orchestra reads like a roll-call of 20th-century
greats and the film includes interviews with the senior generation of
American musicians, from the centenarian Elliott Carter to the
near-nonagenarian Ned Rorem. A compelling and beautiful documentary.

DVD Performance

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5. Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Claudio Abbado

[Accentus / Select]

Honouring
great musical performance on film, the winning performance “takes a
special, even unique, band of musicians and friends who (we can see)
love what they do, making chamber music on the grandest scale.” Claudio
Abbado revitalised the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003, bringing back
to life an ensemble that had first performed in 1938 under Toscanini's
baton. Though a part-time group, the orchestra is comprised of some of
the finest musicians in Europe, many of them soloists, gathered around a
'core' of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. They are now one of the world's
finest orchestras and performances of Bruckner don't get much more
compelling than this.

Early Music

Victoria: Sacred Works. Ensemble Plus Ultra / Michael Noone

[Archiv / DG]

The
Early Music category has become a showcase of the glorious polyphonic
choral music written before 1600, which has become increasingly popular
in recent decades. Tomás Luis de Victoria was celebrated in 2011, the
400th anniversary of his birth, and this 10-disc set of around 90 works
emerged as a truly stunning tribute to this Renaissance Spanish master.
“It is just deeply humanand
emotional music that [Ensemble Plus Ultra and Michael Noone] perform
not only with great tenderness but so simply that one is struck every
time – as if for thefirst time – by its crystalline, uncomplicated beauty.”

Historic

Chopin: Etudes. Maurizio Pollini

[Testament]

The
Historic category, reserved for recordings making their first
appearance as a commercial release, has put the spotlight on
extraordinary treasures and this previously unissued recording of
Chopin’s Etudes by Maurizio Pollini is no exception. It was made shortly
after the teenage Pollini won the International Chopin Piano
Competition in 1960, but became the first in a long line of recordings
not to be sanctioned by the notoriously highly strung pianist. As the
pianist turned 70 his early thoughts on these works was warmly welcomed
by Gramophone, which said: “It is surely
astonishing that Pollini could reject his early superfine brilliance,
his aristocratic musicianship, his patrician ideal in the Chopin
Etudes.”

Instrumental

Chopin, Liszt, Ravel: Piano Works. Benjamin Grosvenor (pf)

[Decca]

Gramophone’s
Young Artist of the Year also scoops the Award for Best Instrumental
with his album of Chopin, Liszt and Ravel. Full of “coltish exuberance”
and a “subtle brand of bravura,” according to reviewer Rob Cowan,
Grosvenor’s virtuosity and dexterity are clear, but it is in Liszt’s En rêve
that his artistry paints the most beautifully subtle canvas.
Grosvenor’s debut disc on Decca topped the specialist classical charts
for several weeks.

Claudio Abbado's Fidelio,
caught live with his superb Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the pit in
2010, also finds two of today's finest dramatic singers in the central
roles: Nina Stemme, today's leading Isolde, and Jonas Kaufmann, today's
most accomplished dramatic tenor. Gramophone says: “If Fidelio
speaks as no other opera does of the miraculous resilience of the human
spirit, Claudio Abbado’s late re-creation of it serves only to compound
that miracle.”

Orchestral

Martinů: Symphonies Nos 1-6. BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jiři Bělohlávek

[ONYX / Select]

In
what is traditionally one of the most hotly contested categories and
sparring ground of today's major conductors and orchestras, Jiři
Bělohlávek triumphs with this superb set of the Martinů symphonies
recorded live at the Barbican in 2009/10 with the BBC Symphony
Orchestra. Gramophone critic Mike Ashman firmly dismisses talk of “the
grace and elegance of Bělohlávek’s conducting” in these colourfully
scored wartime works – though that is clearly there – and highlights
“the pain and stress” they often depict which is “superbly realised
here”.

A
superb collection of 18th-century arias written for the castrato
Gaetano Guadagni from leading British countertenor Iestyn Davies.
Reputedly a “wild and careless singer” when he first came to London,
Guadagni’s untapped potential was soon identified and nurtured by
Handel, who went on to write some of his finest arias for him. He was so
famous that Horace Walpole named a racehorse after him and he was
Gluck’s first Orfeo, but it has taken surprisingly long for someone to
produce an intelligently chosen and stylishly performed recital
exploring his career and Iestyn Davies has done just that.

Solo Vocal

Songs of War. Simon Keenlyside (bar); Malcolm Martineau (pf)

[Sony Classical]

Reactions
to this disc’s concept and programme – as well as the sepia soldier on
the cover – can be predicted: Simon Keenlyside is more often nominated
for the Awards for opera productions, but here he debuts in the Solo
Vocal category – a cleverly compiled collection of war songs
(predominantly British with a few American additions). “A peak
achievement for both, Malcolm Martineau plays superbly and Keenlyside
brings a huge dramatic range to these powerful songs by Butterworth,
Finzi, Ireland, Vaughan Williams, Kurt Weill and others by pointing out
that war celebrates life as well as confronting death.”

About Gramophone

The
annual Gramophone Awards, the world’s most influential classical music
prizes, given this year in association with Steinway & sons and EFG
International, were launched in 1977 by Gramophone magazine (founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie). Available internationally, Gramophone publishes bespoke editions of the magazine for the United States of America, Russia and Brazil. The Gramophone Player, available at gramophone.co.uk,
will feature excerpts from all of this year’s prize-winning albums. The
media player - the first from a classical music magazine - features
full-length recordings, podcasts, an extensive editor’s choice section
and a selection of new recordings each month. Subscribers are free to
stream as much music as they wish.

Gramophone has been producing a series of podcasts supporting the Awards at www.gramophone.co.ukand during the month of August nearly 50,000 were downloaded.

Gramophone
has also formed retail partnerships with Amazon, iTunes and many of the
UK’s specialist retailers. iTunes is offering a free sampler featuring
Award-winning recordings at www.itunes.com/gramawards.

Gramophone’s Awards issue is published on Friday 28 September with full information about the Awards and Award winners.

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Music, dance and writing in London, UK. Jessica writes for The Independent and numerous other publications. Author of biographies, novels, plays, libretti. Editor of The Amati Magazine. "Everything she writes is worth reading" - The Times..."Dazzling perceptiveness" - Joanna Lumley on Songs of Triumphant Love...
"A rare talent" - Gavin Esler on Hungarian Dances. Jessica is available to write articles on music and the arts and for public speaking engagements including pre-concert talks. To book her, please contact Limelight Celebrity Management: mail@limelightmanagement.com
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JESSICA DUCHEN TALKS, CONCERTS & PLAYS

28 July, afternoon performance (time tbc)
Fishguard Festival, Wales
I’m teaming up with the distinguished British pianist Peter Donohoe, artistic director of the Fishguard Festival, for a special performance of Alicia’s Gift, the concert of the novel. More info here

20 February 2016, 2pm, WIGMORE HALL: ALICIA'S GIFT, The Concert of the Novel, with Viv McLean (piano) and me (narrator). That's right. The Wigmore Hall. The day will also include a panel discussion about child prodigies, which I'm chairing. More details soon.